


it can only be a haunting

by thefudge



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ghost Sex, Ghosts, Haunting, Pining, light M, ost: balanescu quartet - life and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:15:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27335548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: She rises inside him, an endless column.
Relationships: Hannah Grose/Owen Sharma
Comments: 15
Kudos: 48





	it can only be a haunting

**Author's Note:**

> technically, i haven't finished this show, but i simply HAD to write out my feelings because...them ;___;

She pierces right through him, she does.

If Owen had any taste for jokes right now, he would make a clever pun about it.

But he can’t think of anything else except Hannah’s caress, touching the inside of him, reaching places he did not even know he had.

How do you make love to a ghost?

Perhaps you find the ghost inside you.

Hannah is always vivid, always _real_ to him, she could never stop being larger than life.

Yet also quietly dignified, not diminished, but fitting herself to her less than ideal circumstances. She inhabits a place with such elegance.

He thinks of the Endless Column.

He saw variations of it on his tenth day in Paris when he stumbled upon Brancusi’s Studio at the Pompidou Center. The Column, in its many half-block variations, looks to him like bread, leavened and rolled, a braided challah, baked in the sun, hardened by weather, turned into stone. Yet, there is still something soft and unfinished in the soft valleys of its ascent. A column growing like wheat towards the sky, like the goddess in the sky who gave us the wheat, like her body, tall and dignified, yet completely vertical and alone, imposing itself on no one.

He is a fool. Waxing poetry about bread and stone and women.

Well, _a_ woman.

He sits with her in his car and looks straight ahead at the strange labyrinth of foliage which at night becomes hostile and difficult to pass through.

He is crying, tears falling and drying quickly on his cheeks because he has let the window down.

Hannah reaches out with her hand and touches his cheek.

He leans into that warm, airborne hand. She passes through his flesh and returns to the surface in the same moment. He shudders.

“What can I do?” he asks, with a wretched sob. “How can I…” _take you with me_ , he wants to say.

Does she think it’s selfish of him to think of his own wants first?

Hannah’s mouth smiles in that way of hers that makes each sad moment a blessing. “Open your arm.”

She sinks into his embrace. Quite literally, there is a feeling of sinking, as he opens his arm and she glides forward seamlessly and leans her head on his chest.

Owen exhales slowly. Hannah rubs her cheek against his sweater. “All right?”

There’s a little bit of mischief in her voice, as if she were teasing him. No, that’s usually his job.

He steadies his voice. “Perfect.”

He places his arm around her and rests his fingers on her forearm and little webs of electricity connect them, as if everything were happening inside.

He wants to kiss the throbbing side of her temple, where life pulses like a simulacrum, and then maybe her apple-sweet cheek, preserved in eternity, and perhaps her red mouth, always perfectly rouged, if he could manage it. But she sinks further into him and she won’t lift her head anymore. So they sit like this, in delicious, terrible silence, and he tries not to think of anything, because overthinking it would ruin the moment.

Hannah chuckles against his chest. “Your heart is beating so fast. Owen, darling, you must slow down.”

Owen swallows. “Yeah, well, yours would be too if –”

“ - if I was alive?” she asks, slyly. How cruel she can be in her gentleness. _God_ , he thinks.

“If you were me, and you had the most maddening woman in your arms,” he corrects dryly.

Hannah finally lifts her head. “Maddening?”

“Wonderfully maddening,” he says, almost resentfully, as if she were punishing him with all this wonderfulness, because she is.

And when she smiles that Hannah smile – there are _so_ many – that indicates she’s genuinely delighted he grabs her chin and enters her flesh. He kisses her on the mouth, pressing his lips to the core of her, because now, every part of her is a center. She gasps. Her breath becomes his breath and their lips are a column, and holy fuck – he should not curse like this in front of her – but the feeling of her tongue, dead or alive, is the best fucking feeling in the world. Oh no, there he went again.

Yes, okay.

He had that fantasy, once or twice.

But he respected Mrs. Grose too much to let his mind wander.

It’s just, sometimes, she walks into the kitchen in her lovely flowing skirt, tightly buttoned at the waist, and his thumb itches to skip over one button, just the one.

He asks her to taste something for him, because he can only trust _her_ sensitive palate to tell him. He might ask others, just to be polite, but her mouth is the bearer of truth, and he loves to feed it. And maybe – maybe he thinks about the kitchen as a place of many possibilities. Maybe he lifts her up on the kitchen counter because in this scenario she’d actually let him. Maybe he needs her at eye level, needs to look her in the eye to see if she truly likes it. And maybe, maybe his mind wanders further and his fingers run over the fabric of her skirt, bunch it in his fists to make room for her on the counter, and her legs open slightly to help him, to let the skirts fall sideways until he can see bare leg. Maybe all of that could happen.

He’d place the spoon in her mouth and she’d utter a soft, intoxicating “ _mmm_...” and his knuckles would trace the smoothness of her leg, that part of her she shows no one, the flesh still warm, warm enough to eat.

These fantasies always end too quickly.

“Owen? Owen, are you listening to me?”

They’re discussing the children’s menu for the week. Not a good idea to let his mind wander.

Because you see, he respects Mrs. Grose so very much.

And now?

Now, there are no children’s menus.

Now she’s not there and he wants to defile her ghost, and he hates himself for it, but oh God, it’s not fair – it’s not fair – it’s not _fair_ – to be given Paris _and_ her and for all of these things to be taken away, like a dream he had no chance of conjuring.

He runs blind down familiar corridors, chasing after her. He can hear her tinkling, husky laughter, bells and smoke, right ahead of him. He traps her inside the chapel, right against the candle-lit wall and buries his head in the hollow of her neck, bites the side of her throat, not in a fit of passion, but to verify that he can, that she is there, that he can pierce her just as she pierces him. He won’t let go.

Her hand brushes his forehead. 

_You have to let go._

But he’s a stubborn bastard. She has seen nothing yet.

She rises inside him, an endless column.

He opens his mouth at night, but not to let her out. No, to swallow her back down.

He will keep her there until his bones fucking erode.

(He holds her hips down, keeps her anchored on top of him. 

"Fuck, Hannah, can you - move -?"

"I could." 

"Why - don't - you?"

She loves watching his breath come out of his throat, like a newborn testing his lungs. 

"Because...I don't want it to be over too quickly."

Owen laughs. "That is a most slanderous misrepresentation of my character. And stamina." 

The ghostly flesh of her grins at him. 

"Oh, you absolute darling fool," she coos and leans down to kiss him, to pass through him, and Owen moans -

\- arches his back until it seems to touch the ceiling - and - and - 

\- and he tries to hold her to him as he falls into - 

\- complete darkness.)

The first time he sees her, he does not realize how haunting she will be. There is nothing haunting about her. She is light personified: buttery light, hazy light sifted through autumn leaves and painted glass and chandeliers. In the first minutes of talking to her, she feels like home to him.

But – but home is always haunting.

Finally feeling good, finally feeling yourself, finally happy inside your flesh – _there_ , he should have known it.

It can only be a haunting.

**Author's Note:**

> this is the "endless column" referenced in the story https://img1.oastatic.com/img2/25979534/max/t.jpg


End file.
